Thoughts on data, statistics, computer science, and those other things people call life.

Menu

ST_BUFFER_METERS: The PostGIS function you didn’t know you needed

After spending the better part of the day trying to get my projections right so I could draw a 100 meter buffer around points for 311 noise complaints for bars, clubs, and restaurants in New York City, I found these gems I’d like to share:

They come from GIS Tutor and were a lifesaver. ST_BUFFER is usually my friend, but casting the geometry to a geography (see my post on the difference) and asking for 100 meters wasn’t working. This did the trick. Hopefully it’ll be a part of the new PostGIS Add-ons, if it hasn’t been added already.

2015-09-23 Update: I recently discovered I could easily embed a Github Gist into my blog posts and have started doing this for all my posts. I replaced the images I had here previously with the code gists so readers can copy and paste the code.